I wasn’t jumping around the room, which I think is probably a bad sign,” Paul Weller remarked to Uncut about his initial response to the album that threatened to sink his career. It’s fair to say The Style Council’s label wasn’t exactly leaping for joy either. Indeed, on hearing 1989’s Modernism: A New Decade, appalled Polydor bosses decided they’d rather cut their losses than subject fans to the burgeoning movement known as deep house.
One might assume this was another case of record company narrowmindedness. After all, those who’d followed Weller from The Jam had embraced everything from politicised Northern Soul and smooth sophisti-pop to languid R&B accompanied by the 80s most homoerotic video without barely batting an eyelid. Surely, some chunky Italo piano chords and four-to-the-floor beats wouldn’t leave them recoiling in horror?